1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates, in general, to a power supply system and a method of controlling the same, and more particularly, to a power supply system having a power supplying unit supplying direct current (DC) power, and a DC/DC converter having a plurality of phase processing units with which the DC/DC converter converts the DC power supplied from the power supplying unit into a plurality of individual powers at different voltages, as needed for each component of a computer system, the plurality of phase processing units separating direct current supplied from the power supply system into a plurality of phase currents to process the plurality of phase currents.
2. Description of the Related Art
Generally, electronic or electric apparatuses require a DC power supplying unit to convert a commercial AC power into a DC voltage which is used to allow the electronic or electric apparatuses to operate. As the DC power supplying unit, a switching mode power supply (SMPS) system, being small in size, and being light in weight and having a high efficiency, has been mainly used.
In a conventional computer system, the DC power supplied from the power supply system is supplied to each component of the computer system installed within a motherboard thereof. Further, the DC power supplied from the power supply system is limited to DC voltages of, for example, 5V, 3.3V and 12V; for this reason, to adaptively generate voltage levels, as needed, for respective components provided within the motherboard such as a central processing unit (CPU), a chipset, a memory, etc., a DC/DC converter is provided within the motherboard. The DC/DC converter is supplied with a DC voltage applied from the power supply system and reduces the DC voltage from the power supply system to an appropriate level of the DC voltage.
As shown in FIG. 1, a DC/DC converter 120 is designed so as to meet wattage needed for each component. For example, in a case of a computer system employing a CPU of a Pentium-IV, the CPU needs a maximum power of about 90W (1.5V, 60A). Further, the computer system is supplied with a voltage level converted by the DC/DC converter 120 having a plurality of phase processing units 122, 124 and 126. Since a general DC/DC converter 120 is limited to a maximum current of 20 A, the DC/DC converter 120 having three phase processing units 122, 124 and 126 is used, wherein each phase processing unit 122, 124 and 126 is designed so that the maximum phase current flowing therein is 20 A. Further, the DC power is separated into three phases by the DC/DC converter 120 and adequate voltages thereof are supplied to the CPU as the loading unit 140 (see FIG. 1).
When at least one of the three phase processing units 122, 124 and 126 in the power supply system is damaged, a current distribution cannot be made equally. However, in a conventional power supply system, the computer system cannot immediately recognize such a trouble even where the current distribution is not uniform and the CPU has continuously operated. The continuous operation results in applying extra stress to other undamaged phase processing units, thereby causing trouble in an operation of the computer system.